tinder foundation

I’m sorry I’ve neglected you. I’ve been busy, but that’s not the only reason that I’ve not visited you. True, I have been spending more time in Norwich of late, and granted, I’m working on an exciting new project.

I’ve been off courting inspiration at Thinking Digital London and Manchester’s Future Everything ideas-fests. And I’ve had some really interesting thoughts, which are currently in the incubation stage so not quite ready for you yet!

I have been enjoying doing my work as a board member of digital inclusion charity Tinder Foundation (completely unrelated to the app!).

I’ve not shared ‘My Week In Happy’ for a while, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t felt happy.

There is some sadness, but I don’t want that to get in the way of talking about the good things. Indeed, it’s possibly more important than ever to focus on the positive.

I have a few exciting projects in the pipeline, some of which I’m keeping to myself for now! In the meantime, I’m sharing with you some paintings which I unearthed in my archive (under bed storage).

Life after love

It need not be love in the usual pop song romantic sense that I’m thinking of, more of the end of one chapter and the start of another. Yes, I am sad about my cat Cosmo’s passing, but that didn’t stop me getting down the gym first thing on Sunday morning and finding this beautiful tranquil scene that you can see above.

Good people making great things happen

On Friday night I popped down to The Umbrella Cafe in Manchester’s fashionable Northern Quarter. Because I was courageous enough to make my very first visit to the cafe by myself it gave me the chance to meet the fabulous trio of women to brought the idea to life Debbie, Michaela and Helen.

Manchester Girls Geeks are also doing brilliantly, if you’d like to find out more about us and learn how to create and edit Wikipedia pages we have this great event happening this Sunday (23rd November). You can sign up for the workshops here.

And finally, I don’t really talk about my day job on here that often, but today I attended an excellent conference organised by the Tinder Foundation (nothing to do with the dating app) on making sure no-one is left behind as services increasingly move to digital.

It was so heartwarming to hear about the many different approaches to getting people online and skilled up, but the cherry on the conference cake was when the winner of an iPad Air donated it to another delegate so that they could use it as part of their own digital inclusion project.

I enjoyed the Digital Evolution conference so much and met so many kind and good people that I thought it was time I put together a little gallery.

Helen Milner, CEO of the Tinder Foundation talks about cracking the nut of hard to reach fruit.